DeSantis Board Nixes Free Disney Passes and Reductions for Staff, in Transfer Positive to Win the Governor Main Reputation Factors

Earlier this month, Florida governor Ron DeSantis urged Disney to drop its lawsuit towards him and the state, saying that he had “moved on” and the corporate ought to too. Sadly for the governor, Disney didn’t act on his suggestion, which most likely had one thing to with the truth that he has spent greater than a 12 months attacking the corporate for talking out towards his “Don’t Say Homosexual” regulation, stripping Disney of management of its particular district, and threatening to construct a jail complicated subsequent to its park. It’s additionally very doable that the corporate didn’t truly imagine DeSantis and his allies had truly “moved on”—and a current transfer by the board he put in earlier this 12 months suggests some folks actually haven’t!

Sure, on Monday the folks handpicked by DeSantis to supervise Disney’s former governing district—which had for many years been managed by Disney itself—requested the state inspector basic to analyze the distribution of free season passes and reductions to district workers that it claims had been a part of a “scheme to funnel…taxpayer {dollars}“ to the corporate. In a launch, the DeSantis-backed board mentioned that roughly $2.5 million in reductions, passes, and different perks had been given to district workers and their households final 12 months. The discharge famous that “instantly upon discovering the scheme,” the board “set in movement plans to remove it.”

Phrases like scheme, funnel, and taxpayer {dollars} may make it sound like one thing nefarious was afoot. Nonetheless, as Richard Foglesong, a Rollins Faculty professor emeritus who actually wrote a ebook about Disney governance, instructed Fortune, it seems like what was truly occurring was not a tax rip-off however a typical worker profit program, like how a college may give free passes to sporting occasions to its professors.

In the meantime, on the subject of schemes and ethics, Fortune writes:

The criticism from the DeSantis appointees comes because the district administrator they appointed final Might faces an ethics dilemma of his personal. Glen Gilzean, who earns $400,000 yearly in his new job, is also chair of the Florida Fee on Ethics. He cannot concurrently be a fee board member and work for the district as a result of the fee prohibits public workers from serving on its board, a fee legal professional mentioned final week in a authorized opinion.

Anyway, we’re positive this transfer to go after worker perks will solely additional endear DeSantis not solely to Floridians however to all People, and win him main recognition factors on the polls.